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Thursday, May 8, 2014

My latest book is out this week and I’m kind of excited about it. It’s
The New Birder’s Guide published by
my great friends at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in Boston. This book’s core
content—simple species profiles of 300 of the most-commonly encountered North
American birds—is based upon The Young
Birder’s Guide to Birds of North America which is aimed at young people
between the ages of 8 and 12.

The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of North America was itself an expanded version (with 100
western bird species added) of my original book in this series The Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern
North America which was a best seller among nature books in its time and
the winner of several book awards. After the publication of the eastern YBG I wanted to do a version for young
birders in the western United States, but the folks at HMH were more
enthusiastic about doing a guide for all of North America, so that’s the
direction we took.

My original idea for doing a field guide for young birders
came from my own experience as a 7-year-old who had sparked on birds but
struggled with the available resources. It wasn’t until my family moved from
Iowa to Ohio in 1971 and my mom fell in with a gang of birding women that I
discovered that bird watching was a hobby and there were other people who
thought birds were cool. This was also my introduction to Pat Murphy, leader of
The Betsey Birders (affiliated with a local organization for women and girls
known as The Betsey Mills Club) who became a birding mentor to our family and
to dozens of others in the Marietta, Ohio region. Pat introduced us to field
guides and bird feeders and taught us bird identification and bird songs. She
also gave me my first look through a spotting scope. This gave my interest in
birds and nature an enormous boost and eventually led to my family starting Bird Watcher’s Digest. But that’s
another story…

So when it was time for me to propose a new book idea, my
talented editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Lisa A. White, asked my what I
wanted to do. I told her I wanted to create a field guide for young birders.
She asked what my vision was and I replied, “I want to create the field guide
that I wish I’d had as a young person interested in birds.”

Lisa liked this concept but wondered aloud how I would make
this book different from “all the other kids books out there on birds and
nature.”

And that was the genesis of these three books. Phoebe and
her classmates helped me for their 4th and 5th grade
years, choosing photos, critiquing design samples, refining the content, and
this made the entire book-creating process incredibly inspiring for me. We
started out by going birding and using every single field guide I could
find—both for kids and for adults. The kids told me what they liked and didn’t
like. We followed the progress of the book through concept development,
writing, editing, re-writing, more editing, image and illustration selection,
design samples, production, proofing, galleys, and—finally—finished books. The
day I walked into Salem Liberty Elementary School, halfway through their 6th
grade year, and handed out copies of The
Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America to each of the
students was the single proudest day of my professional life. I still get
choked up thinking about it. We DID it! We made a BOOK! We all just stood there
beaming…

The original Young Birder's Guide to eastern birds.

A month or so later I was at a birding festival—I can’t
remember where—giving my first talk based upon the Young Birder’s Guide. Afterwards I was selling and signing copies
of the book and the very first person to buy one was a friendly woman of about
70 who was buying a copy for her grandson who had shown some interest in birds.
I signed the book and endorsed it to her grandson; she thanked me and walked
out of the auditorium. About 20 minutes later I saw her come back into the room
and get back in line. Soon she was back at my table, shaking her right
forefinger at me.

“You should have called this The NEW Birder’s Guide! I was
leafing through it in my car and the content and approach are so easy to
understand! It’s PERFECT for a new birder like me. I’ll take another one and
you can autograph it to me, my name is Irene.”

A light bulb went off in my head as I signed her book. And
now, six years after that encounter, here is The New Birder’s Guide. It includes the same 300 species profiles
as the all-of-North-America version of the YBG
but redesigned for adults. And it features almost 40 pages of new introductory material
for the adult beginning birder. These introductory pages include advice on
finding and identifying birds, on field craft, on bird conservation, how to
dress, how to gear-up for a birding trip, how to choose optics, and so on.
Perhaps my favorite section is the one entitled “You Might be a Birder if…”
I’ll let you be the judge of whether or not I get things right. At the very
least I hope it’ll give you a chuckle.

That's me guiding young birders in Massachusetts.

If you are a new birder, or if you know a new (or young)
birder, I hope you’ll consider getting them a copy of one of these books. After
all, Phoebe is off to college this fall and we’re counting every penny. Have
you seen what college tuition costs these days? Yikes!

Phoebe has helped me at many book signings.

Thanks for coming along with me on this journey. I’ll see
you out there with the birds!

Bill of the Birds

P.S. When The Young
Birders Guide to Birds of North America came out in 2012, covering 300
species for the continent, it replaced The
Young Birder’s Guide to Birds of Eastern North America. The good folks at
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt allowed me to acquire the remaining 1,500 copies of
the eastern YBG with the stipulation
that I not sell them. So I gave them away to young birder’s clubs, nature
centers, scout groups, teachers, schools, and to kids who’d already “sparked”
on birds. I know this may have taken away of a few sales of my books, but I’ve
always felt that my main mission on this planet is to help people discover the
joys of bird watching. And there’s no better way to accomplish that than by
giving someone a copy of the book I wished I’d had as a child—way back in 1968,
when a snowy owl flew into our Iowa front yard and my life was changed forever.

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About Bill

Bill of the Birds

Bill Thompson III is the editor of Bird Watcher's Digest by day. He's also a keen birder, the author of many books, a dad, a field trip leader, an ecotourism consultant, a guitar player, the host of the "This Birding Life" podcast, a regular speaker/performer on the birding festival circuit, a gentleman farmer, and a fungi to be around. His North American life list is somewhere between 673 and 675. His favorite bird is the red-headed woodpecker. His "spark bird" was a snowy owl. He has watched birds in 25 countries and 44 states. But his favorite place to watch birds is on the 80-acre farm he shares with his wife, artist/writer Julie Zickefoose. Some kind person once called Bill "The Pied Piper of Birding" and he has been trying to live up to that moniker ever since.